DECHAMPS, VICTOR-AUGUSTE-ISIDORE. - Cardinal, b. at Melle near Ghent on 6 Dec. 1810, d. at Malines on 28 Sept. 1883. In Oct. 1832 he entered the major seminary of Tournai, followed the higher courses of theology at Malines and was ordained a priest in 1834. On 21 Aug. 1835 he entered the novitiate of the Redemptorists at St-Trond. He was professor of Sacred Scripture among them; then rector at Liège and at Tournai, provincial of Belgium and at the same time a celebrated preacher and instructor of the royal princes. Among his converts, Gen. de Lamoricière is well known. He refused the episcopate of Liège and the rectorship of the University of Louvain, and accepted the episcopate of Namur in Sept. 1865; from there he was transferred to the archbishopric of Malines in Dec. 1867.
He is the most characteristic and prolific apologist of Belgium. His Oeuvres complètes, Malines 1874-84, comprise 18 vols. D., however, was more than a scholar: he was a thinker, an ascetic, an orator, and he drew his inspiration particularly from St. Alphonsus and from De Maistre, making use of meditation and experience. In apologetics he departs clearly from the contemporary manuals, elaborating traditional elements into new syntheses. He asks only for the verification of two facts, one internal, the other external; this seems to him sufficient to lead man to the acceptance of the supernatural order proposed to the world by the Catholic Church. The two facts are easily verifiable by anyone. The "interior fact" consists in the aspiration (appel) to faith and to charity, "a kind of immanence of God in man" and the only solution to the great problems of human origin and destiny. The "exterior fact" is instead "a kind of transcendence of God in his Church or of the Church in God." If the Church in its origins proved its mission "by the divine works" that it performed, now, having become great and strong, it proves it by "the divine work that it is," in the holiness of its doctrine, of its worship, of its activities, in the prodigies of faith of entire peoples prostrate before the Eucharist or in the confessional, etc. The Church itself, therefore, is a motive of credibility, distinct from any other, because it is present, living and speaking in such a way that it manifests and explains itself.
D., however, does not disregard other motives of credibility, likewise sanctioned by the Vatican Council (Sess. III, cap. 3 and cann. 3 and 4, Denz-U, 1790, 1812 ff.), even though he makes almost exclusive use of his preferred one, led to this by his apostolic practice, in particular by the experiences of converts from Protestantism.
The criticisms of Broglie, of Fr. E. Matignon (Correspondant, 25 Apr. 1857; Etudes religieuses, Apr. 1864), like the posthumous ones of Mallet (Annales de philosophie chrétienne, 1905, 1906, 1907) and the more recent studies, emphasize the necessity of not interpreting the apologetics of D. as favorable to a requirement of the supernatural, or to a method of immanence divorced from the rational preambles, from the historical foundations of Catholicism or from the teaching authority that transmits divine truth to us.
At the 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 deputation de fide and, within it, of the narrower commission of the three most influential. He also belonged to the deputation de postulatis, of 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). On behalf of papal infallibility D. had already fought in celebrated controversies with Dupanloup, with Maret, with Gratry. In June 1869 he had published the pamphlet L'infallibilità et le concile général, étude de science religieuse à l'usage des gens du monde. Even the German bishops assembled at Fulda had believed they had to refute him indirectly in their collective letter. At the Council he also took part in the drafting of the Dei Filius (but the recasting of G. B. Franzelin's draft is by C. Martin and G. Kleutgen), and of the Pastor aeternus, and he polemicized with firm courtesy against Dupanloup, to whom, however, the master of the Sacred Palaces denied the visa for the publication of his reply. D. considered Dupanloup a defender of a Gallicanism already tolerated as an opinion, but now so reckless as to claim it as certain doctrine. On 17 May 1870 D. replied, in the name of the deputation de fide, to the objections raised against the definition of infallibility.
On his return from the Council, he took a particular interest in the Kulturkampf, addressing himself also to Emperor William (Oct. 1873), in the liberal polemic and in the struggle against the school legislation of 1879. In March 1875 he was created cardinal and in Feb. 1878 he took part in the Concilio that elected Leo XIII. The last years of D. were embittered by unjust accusations and by indiscreet revelations.