The justification for a Roman Catholic priesthood rests on certain passages in the New Testament, but the key words in the original greek do not accurately translate as "priest".
In these critical New Testament passages, certain followers are referred to as presbyters. The Greek word presbyter means elder, and references in the New Testament to presbyters are not to priests but to community elders. Nevertheless, the early forerunner of the Roman Catholic Church soon changed its presbyters into priests, borrowing much of the significance from pagan religions where priests were holy men who enjoyed a special relationship with God and made sacrifices to him. A priesthood was thus created without any biblical justification, a fact which may have contributed to the priesthood's reluctance to allow people to read the bible. When people did read the bible for themselves, and failed to find the word sacerdos (priest), only presbyter (elder), the result was widespread anger. The lack of biblical justification for a priesthood was one of the main complaints of Church dissidents and reformers, and it is for this reason that Presbyterian sects have rejected a priesthood in favour of lay leaders called Elders. Other Churches suspicious of an official priesthood call their officers Ministers or Pastors.
The New Testament does not mention priests except in the sense that all believers are priests (1 Peter 2:9 and 2:5, Revelations 1:6, 5:10, and 20:6) and believers were regarded as priests only in the sense that all Jews had been regarded as priests in the Old Testament (Exodus 19:6). Nowhere in the New Testament is the ministry of Jesus' followers described as a priesthood. Neither is any follower referred to as a priest, except in the general sense that all followers were priests. It was presumably because of these passage that the Waldensians advocated a priesthood of all believers. (They are studiously ignored by most denominations, including the Roman Church).
The Cathars for their part held that there should be no priesthood, arguing that there was no priesthood in the original version of the scriptures (which was not quite true).
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