http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/04/13/news-arellano.php
On the majestic stone wall outside Saint Josephs Church in Santa Ana, a two-story mural of Jesus greets commuters speeding west on Civic Center Drive. Painted during the mid-1980s, the mural depicts Jesus standing on a mount as rays of light lift Him toward heaven. A halo swirls around His head. His wounds are fresh and jagged; His right arm is held high in benediction.
Jesus blesses the world. Nothing strange about that. But centuries of artistic tradition soon give way to tawdry modernistic expression. Instead of shoulder-length locks, this Jesus sports bobbed hair like a Sylvia Plath heroine. His pasty, beardless face resembles a youthful Medici maiden; even judged against your average Eurocentric depiction of the 33-year-old martyred Nazarene, this ones weirdly northern.
But thats not whats weirdest. More interestingly, Jesus is completely nude. Nowhere is the tattered cloth that two millennia of Christian art universally placed across His crotch. Instead, a red bulge suggests the Saviors scrotum, while a swath of pink appears to indicate the Holy Johnson.
Hello!
Now, perhaps it is only coincidence that, until this summer, this same church was presided over by Father César Salazar, who is awaiting results of a federal investigation into charges he downloaded child pornography. But long before Salazar was swept into the churchs broadening sex scandal, the St. Joseph mural was an object of scorn among sex-abuse victims who see the piece as symbolic of the Diocese of Oranges lax attitude toward deviant priests.
