I am seriously asking if anyone has ever heard this doctrine taught from any other Catholic source before,

other than "Fr." Chris Alar from the Divine Mercy is relating about the Franciscan Friars saying of Padre Pio (in the link above), which is something like,

"One can pray for conversions of the deceased retroactively, because God is outside time."

I am not concerned with IF Padre Pio said it or not (I know there are many sayings attributed to him that we cannot 100% verify).

I am asking about if the DOCTRINE has been taught from a Catholic source anywhere else before?

Thanks in advance.

I don't know the answer to that. It is something that I have always considered makes perfect Catholic sense - why would God not anticipate our prayers and sacrifices, since He sees everything in an 'eternal present'. So I was glad to hear this confirmation of what I had always thought from Padre Pio -supposing the source to be reliable. However, like you, I would love to see it from St Thomas for example as well!

It's interesting, not something I would entirely write off..but I have trouble seeing how it would work exactly. In the example given by Fr(?) Alar, what would have happened if Padre Pio didn't pray for his grandfather at that moment? What if the idea to pray occured to him, but he dismissed it? I don't see how anything would change. His grandfather is already dead, and he either converted or he didn't. It's not like by not praying for an event that has already occured, you somehow change the outcome..the past is the past

I know where you are coming from. Yet if we used that logic in our spiritual life, we would also dismiss Our Lord's appeal "Could you not watch one hour with Me?" as being irrelevant to us. Our Lord is already reigning gloriously in Heaven. But during His agony He saw all those souls throughout time who would indeed keep Him company in His agony and it was a consolation to Him, just as He saw all those who would not profit from His passion and it caused Him such suffering. So too, all the souls before the coming of Our Lord who are now in Heaven were saved in anticipation of His merits. So theologically this seems to make sense to me.

So, one does not even need theology or Catholic doctrine to know that this is true.

God is ETERNAL, and this can be known even by natural reason.  What does this mean?  It's not that God knows the "future", but for God, the past, present, and the future are PRESENT.  As the personal lay dying, God is as aware of future prayers offered for the person as He is of past and present ones ... for Him there is no difference, other than if it's a question of whether He simply HAPPENS to heed those prayers.  That part has not been revealed to us, and there are many such things we don't know, even in terms of how He chooses to apply prayers offered to souls in Purgatory, etc.

But in terms of whether God regards future prayers, merits, sacrifices, etc., I offer you this.  For the longest time, there was pushback against the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, since how could it be that Our Lady did not require Redemption (this is actually related to the Co-Redemptrix controversy)?  Duns Scotus helped resolve the issue by describing how Our Lady was Redeemed by Christ due to God's having considered the FUTURE Redemption by Our Lord, so that indeed she had been redeemed by Our Lord, just ahead of time.

So we have the fact that it's 100% metaphysical certainty that God can regard future prayers, since it's in the very understand of His being eternal, and at least one striking example of a case where God did in fact apply FUTURE merits.

So, it's only confusing to our human pea-brains.  Past, Present, and Future are all present to God ... and there is no time eternity, and God is outside of time.  If I pray now for someone who died 100 years ago, and, then, as that person lay dying, God is aware of those prayers.

I think you're stuck in the old science fiction time travel paradox thing regarding changing the past.  So, we wouldn't be "changing the past", but ... it could so happen that God inspired someone in the future to pray for this individual, since even that's inspired by the Holy Ghost, and whether our future prayer were sufficient or not, it's not different than whether our present prayers are sufficient or not.  Perhaps the outcome of our prayers for someone in the past is in the negative, but then the same may be said of our prayers for present and future outcomes as well.  God arranges everything according to His Providence, and if some are inspired to pray for people in the past, then it's by the prompting of His grace, just as if people are or are not inspired to pray for someone presently.  Yet between those situations, there is no difference whatsoever to God.  Does He somehow "weigh" them "less"?  Not sure, but perhaps extremely fervent future prayers might weigh more than some present lukewarm or lackluster ones.  Bottom line is that 1) prayers is never wasted, 2) God CAN regard and apply future prayers ... to deny this would be heretic, 3) God has at least in the case of the Immaculate Conception done exactly that,

While Padre Pio's opinion was dismissed, if it can be verified that he did in fact say this, I would say that this would constitute some highly credible private revelation regarding the question of to what extent God does in fact heed future prayers, even if it's absolutely certain that He can.  So I wouldn't write that off so quickly just because indeed there are probably millions of fake "Padre Pio sayings" floating around out on the interwebs.

What about all the quotes posted on a previous thread from Popes who said to not pray for deceased non+Catholics neither privately or publicly?

Whether Padre Pio said it or not (I think he didn't), there is nothing in tradition to show this practice at all. It is an innovation.

Whether Padre Pio said it or not (I think he didn't), there is nothing in tradition to show this practice at all. It is an innovation.

You're an utter moron, on just about every subject that you post about.  It's already been explained to you that it's a simple truth of metaphysics that God is outside time, eternal, and that past, present, and future are all present to Him, that as a person lay dying He knows all the future prayers that would be offered just as much as the present prayers an the past prayers.

Do you deny this?  If you do, you're a heretic (in addition to your other heresies).

See, you don't even address the points, but you regurgitate and vomit up the same crap over and over again, since that's what stuck in your pea brain and you cling to it simply because you want to.  Those who use their intellects will seek the truth by actually applying reason to it.

Answer the question of whether future prayers are present to God and that He can know them and see them up front.

True or False?

Then, answer the next question ... has God ever regarded future merits?

Yes or No?

If you say no, then you're also a heretic, since that's central to the dogmatic definition of the Dogma of the Immaculat Conception, since Pope Pius IX explained the rationale for it in those terms.

So you must answer that God can regard future prayers.  You must answer that God has done so at least in one known case.

Consequently, in order to rule this out, you'd have to commit two heresies.  There's nothing to rule it out.

You also apply a completely idiotic notion of "innovation", as if something had not been revealed explicitly and believed from the very begginings of the Church in its precise form, then it's "innovation".  Well, that's what those who attacked Papal Infallibility claimed, since you can struggle to find explicitly formulations regarding the notion for many hundreds of years.  Same was said of the Immaculate Conception, where the detractors made the same claim for the same reasons.

How about "Limbo"?  For the first 1,000 years of history, the notion did not exist ... but it was only later pieced together, first by Abelard and then articulated clearly by St. Thomas Aquinas, and then for about the past 800 years, very few do NOT accept it.  There's actually some room for "innovation", in the sense explain by St. Thomas et al, where you draw new conclusions from previous conclusions, where it does ultimately derive from Revelaed Truth, but that does not mean everything is explicit from the first day.  Those like you came along and attacked it as a "Pelagian fable", a heretical innovation ... and the Church had to step in and condemn their attacks against Limbo for having allegedly been an innovation.

So it's dogmatically true that God certain can and in at least one known case has regarded future merits.  I stipulated, of course, that we cannot know that God will hear them and apply them in every case, but then ... the VERY SAME THING holds of prayers offered in the present time.  I can pray all I want for someone dying or currently in Purgatory, but God does not always apply the merits of our prayers, for whatever reasons He has.  There are many for whom lots of people pray who end up losing their souls anyway.  But there's absolutely nothing to prevent God from heeding future prayers.  Period.  End of story.  In many cases, we could be praying for the repose of the soul of people who are in Hell, who were lost.  We're told that this possibility should not deter us, since with God, no prayers are wasted.  That also applies to this situation.  If we pray for the conversion of those who died in the past, whether or not they have any effect should not deter us from doing so, since, again, no prayers are wasted, and there's NOTHING contrary to Catholic doctrine about a possibility that they might have some effect.  In fact, to assert the opposite, that they CANNOT have any effect, you have to dodge committing two heresies to declare it an impossibility, and then claim to have your own private revelation to deny the God ever does so.  Just as those who may attempt to pray for people who died the past cannot prove that God will apply those prayers, neither can you demonstrate that He will not.  You assume that because a positive outcome to the question hasn't been revealed, that's tantamount to a negative outcome having been positively revealed, which is nonsensical, and more of your logical fallacy.  When something hasn't been revealed one way or another, it's in the real of speculation, and the Church permits speculation that does not run afloud of established Church teaching.