DECHAMPS, VICTOR-AUGUSTE-ISIDORE. – Cardinal, born at Melle near Ghent on 6 Dec. 1810, died at Malines on 28 Sept. 1883. In October 1832 he entered the major seminary of Tournai, pursued advanced theological studies at Malines, and was ordained a priest in 1834. On 21 Aug. 1835 he entered the Redemptorist novitiate at St-Trond. Among them he was professor of Sacred Scripture; subsequently rector at Liège and Tournai, provincial of Belgium, and at the same time a celebrated preacher and instructor of the royal princes. Among his converts, General de Lamoricière is well known. He declined the episcopate of Liège and the rectorship of the University of Louvain, but accepted the episcopate of Namur in September 1865; from there he was transferred to the archbishopric of Malines in December 1867.
He is the most characteristic and fruitful apologist of Belgium. His Oeuvres complètes, Malines 1874-84, comprise 18 volumes. D., however, was more a thinker, an ascetic, and an orator than a scholar, and was particularly inspired by St. Alphonsus and De Maistre, drawing on meditation and experience. In apologetics he departed clearly from contemporary manuals, elaborating traditional elements into new syntheses. He asks only for the verification of two facts, one internal and the other external; this seemed to him sufficient to lead man to acceptance of the supernatural order proposed to the world by the Catholic Church. The two facts are readily ascertainable by everyone. The “inner fact” consists in the aspiration (appel) to faith and charity, a “kind of immanence of God in man” and the sole solution to the great problems of human origins and destinies. The “outer fact,” on the other hand, is “a kind of transcendence of God in his Church, or of the Church in God.” If, at its origins, the Church proved her mission “by the divine works” that she performed, now, having become great and strong, she proves it “by the divine work that she is,” in the holiness of her doctrine, her worship, and her activities, in the marvels of faith of entire peoples prostrate before the Eucharist or in the confessional, etc. The Church herself, therefore, is a motive of credibility, distinct from every other, because she is present, living, and speaking, in such a way that she manifests and explains herself.
D. nevertheless does not disregard other motives of credibility, likewise sanctioned by the First Vatican Council (Sess. III, chap. 3 and canons 3 and 4, Denz-U, 1790, 1812 ff.), although he made almost exclusive use of his preferred one, prompted by his apostolic practice, particularly by his experiences with converts from Protestantism.
The criticisms of Broglie and of Fr. E. Matignon (Correspondant, 25 Apr. 1857; Etudes religieuses, Apr. 1864), as well as the posthumous criticisms of Mallet (Annales de philosophie chrétienne, 1905, 1906, 1907) and more recent studies, emphasize the need not to interpret D.’s apologetics as favorable to a demand for the supernatural, or to a method of immanence detached from the rational preambles, the historical foundations of Catholicism, or the teaching authority that transmits divine truth to us.
At the First Vatican Council, D. was “one of the principal luminaries” (J. Brugerette and E. Amann, Vatican [Concile du], in DThC, XV, col. 3562), a member of the de fide deputation and, within it, of the smaller commission of the three most influential members. He also belonged to the de postulatis deputation, on which he was likewise to report to Pius IX. On 8 Jan. 1870 he spoke on the Dei Filius, which sanctioned one of the fundamental ideas of his apologetics (Sess. III, c. 3, Denz-II, 1794). D. had already defended papal infallibility in celebrated controversies with Dupanloup, Maret, and Gratry. In June 1869 he had published the pamphlet L'infallibilité et le concile général, étude de science religieuse à l'usage des gens du monde. The German bishops assembled at Fulda had also thought it necessary to refute him indirectly in their collective letter. At the Council he also participated in the drafting of the Dei Filius (but the revision of G. B. Franzelin’s draft was by C. Martin and G. Kleutgen) and of the Pastor aeternus, and he polemicized with firm courtesy against Dupanloup, who was nevertheless denied by the master of the SS. Palazzi the visa for publication of his reply. D. regarded Dupanloup as the defender of a Gallicanism that had formerly been tolerated as an opinion, but was now so rash as to claim it as a certain doctrine. On 17 May 1870 D. replied, in the name of the de fide deputation, to the objections raised against the definition of infallibility.
On returning from the Council, he took a particular interest in the Kulturkampf, addressing himself also to Emperor Wilhelm (October 1873), in the liberal controversy, and in the struggle against the school legislation of 1879. In March 1875 he was made a cardinal, and in February 1878 he took part in the Conclave that elected Leo XIII. D.’s final years were embittered by unjust accusations and indiscreet revelations.