On March 9, 1074, the reforming pontiff Gregory VII excommunicated all married Roman Catholic priests, establishing the requirement of celibacy that remains in effect today.
The reason why the Pope did this is because he saw that priests were having sons and grandsons who were becoming priests. It created bloodlines of families that were amassing enormous amounts of wealth and power.
And this caused an elitism. These families became distinctly separated from the masses of “regular and average” people. These elites developed a world view that was skewed. Living their wealthy and privileged lives distorted their sense of reality and their perception of what life is all about. They no longer cared for the masses. And they developed a view that they were better than the masses.
The mandate of celibacy changed all of this. No longer could priests amass multi-generational wealth.
And more importantly…..
In order to keep having priests they had to now raise them up from the masses. Every new generation of priests came from the average family. So their values and goals lined up very closely with the overall values and goals of the community in which they served. These priests were part of the community and not separated from it – with no inference of being better than the masses.
It’s quite brilliant and it works very well.
We don’t have this same setup in our political system. And it is particularly obvious in European politics.
There you have a political system that has been in existence for a very long time. And this has created a class of people that are philosophically inbred. They are wealthy and detached from the people they are supposed to serve. They all have elite money, elite education, elite ties. They have no clue whatsoever what the average person is like.