This sermon was preached yesterday by the Rev. Terry Specht at St. Leo the Great Catholic Church. ....Sometime in the 1950s, Christians in America lost their nerve. Gradually a consensus developed that we needed a softer, gentler Christianity. Somehow, we needed to take the edge off the words of this man, Jesus. We thought that if we just repackaged Him without the demands of the Gospel; if we stripped the cross from Christianity, then maybe more people would join the church.