Vendetta is the only...
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"Vendetta" is the only Corsican word which has passed unchanged into the dictionaries of most of the world's languages. The vendetta code provides that an assault on a family's honor must be repaid in blood, and that that blood must be repaid in turn until one or both of the families are exterminated. In 1954, a donkey belonging to one man destroyed another's garden. The gardener castigated the donkey's owner. The donkey owner then shot and killed the garden owner. In subsequent years, there were several more violent deaths resulting from this incident. In another vendetta some decades earlier, seventeen people were killed over which family owned a chestnut tree growing out of a wall dividing their properties. However, as one inhabitant put it concerning the vendetta, "Its judgment was sure, and that is why we could let our pigs run free, knowing that no one would dare to steal one. That was why our family life remained pure, for if a man so much as touched the scarf that bound a woman's head and did not propose marriage immediately, he was dead by nightfall."
Jesus offers a far different set of values. Instead of seeking revenge, we are to reconcile with those who have something against us. It is this new way of doing things, loyalty to Jesus Christ and his teachings, which can result in family division. Division should never be caused by our hatred, animosity, or revenge.
