Do you think Pope Francis said that everybody who participates in economic enterprise, is a murderer? That would be the same as accusing you and a couple million other people involved in ordinary honest businmess enterprise, of being murderers, but I don't think he did that.
My understanding is that "trickle-down theory" has a meaning closer to laissez-faire or Objectivist (Any Rand). People who reject all economic action which is outside of the market, whether by government (fair trade or commercial law) or by private concerns (e.g. charities.) But that's not "all free-market participants."
I think many free-marketeers would agree that a free market ALONE does not produce justice, since the free market must be subject to what Madison called "the benign influence of a responsible government" --- meaning, the Constitutionally enumerated and limited roles that government should play in economic exchange.
That would be: prevention of fraud, protection of creators' intellectual property, establishing sound currency, keeping things competitive (suppressing various kinds of extortion, graft, protectionism, banksterism, cronyism), preventing the "downstreaming" of external costs and harms, including environmental.
That would NOT be: Obamunism, and all its disastrously sovietizing, statist ambitions.
A free-market economy is not totally laissez-faire. It is shaped by the just exercise of both governmental and private non-market factors --- and it's disastrous when it is not.
To take just one example, the free cross-border trade in narcotics, weapons, and pirated technology; human trafficking in age sex-slaves and bracero labor; and the free flow of low-wage workers across borders, is certainly "free market" but certainly not just. A free-market is also shaped by economic transactions which are outside of the market: for instance, private, individual, corporate, and church-related charities, philanthropy, cooperative and mutual-aid societies, and values-based consumer behavior: these are not based on market mechanisms, but form an absolutely essential complement in a free-market economy.
So, as Pope Francis said in that battered Paragraph 54, a free market does not of itself ("por si mismo") "succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world." Of itself is an important phrase, because it indicates that human economic transactions outside of the market (e.g. voluntary charities) will never become redundant: the market system does not achieve universal good results all by itself.
If the Pope is talking about an abstraction that nobody has ever advocated (not even Ayn Rand), fine. He can make that clear.
“Trickle down” is left-wing code for the neo-liberalism of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Many people, both on the left and the right, recognize this - neo-liberalism - to be what he is referring to.
Ever since the church got into “social encyclicals” (usually dated as of 1891), the church has swayed back and forth between capitalism (Centesimus Anos) and fascism (Quadrilisimo Anos) (sp?). So, there is room there for a range of views. By fascism, I mean a big but less than totalitarian state, where property is nominally private but is highly regulated by the government. Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain and Peron’s Argentina would be examples.
I myself rather liked Benedict’s spontaneous statement, Christianity is not a political or an economic system. But, I did not like his skipping over Centisimum Anos to tie-into Populorum Progresso (sp?), to argue that all we really need to love one another to advocate economic policy (oh, provided we reject what he calls “free market fundamentalism,” whatever that means). Sorry, but this sound to me like saying all we have to do is love one another to know how many moons Jupiter has.