The Catholic Culture proposal holds some promise and I'd like it to succeed. If that interests you please do go sign up for it. But...
I'd like to see what other people think about _____.
...don't expect this. Stack Exchange sites just aren't cut out to service that desire. The patterns that make for effective questions an answers in which people get solid answers to specific questions and then move on to their next problem doesn't mesh with patterns that develop ideas through discussion and the injection of opinions.
If what you want is to find out what other people are thinking about current events, you should look for a more classical forum format. If you want high quality software to go with that format that will help keep the community stay a cut above the noise you should look into something powered by Discourse or similar well thought out discussion platforms rather than the clumsy 'bulletin board' genre of software.