I was once in a Discord server where people tried to ‘debate’ Catholicism, and honestly it wasn’t healthy. Unsure if it’s inherent in the format, or was an issue with the folk(s) who ran the thing – but my experience was we basically got the same thing you get anywhere online: an echo chamber among different pockets of people who agree with each other (e.g. the Catholics cluster; the atheists cluster), young people who are just kind of rude about stuff, older people who have a few… issues (one person in particular had anger issues) and spend too much time online, and no one’s really open to having their mind changed, though they enjoy the idle activity of chatting online about a topic.
Personal opinion, real life is the place for most good ‘casual conversations’ to happen on Catholic apologetics. When someone wants ‘debate’ online, but intentionally seeks out amateur Catholics rather than actual professional apologetics resources, it’s usually because they don’t actually want to know the Catholic position… they just want to argue with someone who will try (perhaps poorly) to defend the Catholic position while they throw what they think are superior words at them.
Catholic Answers Live and other resources are free online, and beneficial for people authentically curious about Catholic teaching. I don’t mean to veto the idea, but I don’t personally see an online religious debate forum yielding much fruit (and I wonder if it might distract many well-meaning Catholics from doing more constructive things with our time and with non-believers in our own real-world communities).
Again, that’s just my $0.02. I don’t want to veto the idea in case I’m overlooking a true good. Maybe this honestly could be constructed and maintained well (e.g. if there’s a solid Catholic with good apologetics skills and emotional balance, but in hospital or otherwise with plenty of time to manage the online debate forum).
