WORCESTER — Amid a geopolitical environment in which religious extremism and consumerism are increasingly dominant world views, a tepidness about using the tools of more than a century of Catholic social doctrine represents a missed opportunity, a noted papal scholar argued Tuesday at the College of the Holy Cross.

George Weigel, a Catholic theologian and bestselling author of "Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II," spoke to an audience at the Rehm Library about social teachings contained in various encyclicals, or papal letters, that understood the fundamental connection between culture, economics and politics in a rapidly changing world from the late 19th through the late 20th century.

In responding to a question about a seeming lack of interest current Pope Francis has shown in building or developing those ideas to fill a void of cultural and social leadership, Mr. Weigel said the current pope's background — he spent the years when Pope John Paul II was issuing important encyclicals in remote areas of Argentina, and later grew frustrated with bureaucratic challenges dealing with the Vatican — might have something to do with it.

Mr. Weigel said the tools available from the "architecture" of social doctrine developed over most of the 20th century are useful and practical, and not continuing that tradition would be a terrible loss.

He said modern Catholic social doctrine is based on an architecture of certain broad principles: the rise of economic systems and new forms of society and urbanization in the late 1800s; new forms of government and the rise of totalitarianism in the early 20th century; and the idea of what makes a free and virtuous society in the 21st century.

These encyclicals addressed everything from human rights to workers rights to solidarity, the idea expressed by Pope John Paul II there was more to human relationships than "our capacity to sue each other."

Mr. Weigel said the encyclicals of Pope John Paul II had a particular impact on Catholic social doctrine. In one of three "social encyclicals," he turned the traditional idea of work in the Catholic Church — as a punishment for original sin — into an expression of human creativity. Creativity is a deep expression of the uniqueness of a person, and was considered by Pope John Paul II to be participation in the "sustaining, creative power of God." Work has a spiritual dimension, Mr. Weigel said.

Those ideas also materialized in later encyclicals from John Paul II that dealt with the notion of a connection between work, creativity, and a "vibrant public moral culture."

Mr. Weigel said John Paul II was concerned about unfettered freedom of choice in a post-totalitarian world.

"John Paul II thought it was a grave mistake to imagine that freedoms mean free-floating faculty of choice that can attach itself to anything," Mr. Weigel said.

What that freedom needs is to be tethered to a moral truth. And that truth — that check against totalitarianism — is developed through the free associations. Social groups like families, churches, trade unions are the "first schools of freedom," John Paul II argued, playing a crucial role in developing democratic thought and reasoned debate.

In another, seemingly ahead-of-its-time encyclical, Pope John Paul II reworked the idea that wealth is equated with "stuff." Mr. Weigel said the Pope instead saw wealth as a product of ideas, skills, and entrepreneurial instincts, predating today's "creative economy" by a few decades. But on the other side of wealth is poverty, and Mr. Weigel said the Pope also saw that differently. He said John Paul II saw poverty not as a "lack of stuff," but as more the result of the exclusion from social and cultural networks where wealth is created.