Who wouldn't?  

Every priest and religious who has taken a vow of celibacy wouldn't. 

I don't believe you.  

It is hard to believe, because it is the answer to the question you asked and not the one you thought you asked. Often, when asking this question, we think we are asking: doesn't the thought of marriage appeal to everyone? The answer to that is, of course, I guess it does.  

Then who could possibly prefer not to marry? Who would choose such a thing? 

When our Lord told his disciples a perfectly normal thing, that a man should not divorce his wife nor the wife divorce the man, they were shocked and said that then, it was better not to marry. Christ answered, not everyone can understand this, only those to whom the Father has given the gift. He took what might have been a joking, sarcastic reaction of the apostles and told us a great truth, which we are going to look at now. 

the stuff of stories?  

First, let us remember something all our hero stories are based on. The hero does something we all know should be done, which we should do if we were in his place and the occasion arose, and yet the odds are we wouldn't. And so we admire him when he does. As the story unfolds, we urge him on, encourage him, tell him to go ahead, pay the price, to do that noble thing. If we find that the one we expected to be a hero is no more than a coward (or no more than ourselves) our disappointment knows no telling. The betrayal stings us deeply. 

Let us see what it is that is happening within us during the above process. 

Firstly, we have determined in our minds that certain things have value (to rescue a kidnapped person). Secondly, we have admitted that this value is greater than others which may come more spontaneously to us (to keep my life out of danger). Thirdly, we have recognized that sacrifice is a good thing (we look with awe and reverence at the wound the rescuer received). Fourthly, there must be a proportion between the good effect (rescue) and the danger (injury or death), you might not go into a grizzly's den to rescue a cabbage-patch doll, but what if it were a little child inside there? 

But there can be something even deeper to the hero stories. Take the last question above and rephrase it, ask what if it were your younger brother or sister inside? 

Love can make heroes of us all.  

love, pain and sacrifice 

Love throws a whole new light on sacrifice. It makes it explicable, understandable, right, good. We expect it. 

Further still, love can possibly make us the heroes we thought we could never be. One of the most passionate lovers ever to walk this earth said that love is kind, love does not seek its own benefit, love can put up with anything, suffer anything, endure all things. So, he could have said, if you want to become a hero, learn to love. 

Perhaps, though, this is not the type of love we usually think about. Generally when we think of love we think of marriage, and then only of the bliss and not of its sacrifice.  

But everyone who loves encounters sacrifice, necessarily. Love entails putting someone else in first place and not ourselves - you can't do that without it hurting. That's what sacrifice is, a voluntary hurt. We can take a beating and end up black and blue playing football or ice hockey, we can slip and pay the price when climbing, we can get an abscess on a tooth; all of these bring pain, they hurt us. But there is a wealth of difference between them and sacrifice.  

Sacrifice is pain willingly borne out of dedication or love. Sacrifice is what the football player does as he trains his body, when he could throw in the towel and go and party with his friends instead; when he pushes himself out of dedication to his dream: one more bench-press, one more lap, one more pull-up, even though his body is already aching and he's not quite sure he'll make first string.  

Sacrifice is the mother who stays up nights by her sick child's bed; it is the worry, concern and prayer of a parent over the son or daughter away from home for the first time; it is the missionary who says good-bye to his family and leaves for a foreign land never knowing if he will be back to see them again; sacrifice is anything difficult we do because there is love in our heart.  

And when we are dealing with God he gives us the possibility of turning even the unavoidable pain and suffering of life (such as sickness) into sacrifice, an act of love, by accepting it out of love for him, offering it up. 

And love, when it is tested and proven in sacrifice, grows. And when love grows it accepts and embraces sacrifice more readily, more naturally. 

love and imitation 

There is another aspect to love, now that we are talking about it. It imitates.  

Some people will go to the strangest extremes to imitate what they love, but we have all seen the more normal expressions of love's imitation, such as when we see the influence two young people in love have on one another, and more especially the young child who imitates his dad or her mother.  

Love always changes us. The things or persons we love have an effect on us because they draw us to imitate the good we admire in them.  

We reflect in our behavior and demeanor the things we value and the persons we value. Necessarily. We have the more superficial imitation of the kid who wears his idol on his T-shirt, and then there is the deeper, profound imitation where you change your life according to the person you love. This is what happens in a conversion.  

A person is converted when he discovers how Christ has loved him, and then tries to love him back in the same way. It always means a change of life - even if you have been living well up to then. A true conversion can always be seen in one's search of the scriptures to discover the Person who has captivated us, and a search for the Eucharist to be with that Person, and a search for Penance to meet that Person afresh in reconciliation.  

Like St. Paul, conversion will mean leaving what is old, what is of the world, for what is new and what is of Christ; to think like him, hope like him, love like him, pardon like him, give ourselves to our neighbor like him. Something similar happens in authentic, deep, human love. 

our original question 

Are we not wandering far from our question, why do priests not marry, or rather, if marriage attracts me, is it a sign I do not have a vocation?  

Not really. What we have gotten to is the core of all Christian living. Now let's see the application. 

celibacy is not marrying, and a whole lot more 

It is unfair to just say that priests do not marry - for this doesn't begin to scrape the surface of their promise of celibacy. If it were just a matter of an individual's personal, private choice, "his thing," with no further meaning or significance, it should not upset or offend so many people: many people do not marry and it raises no hackles. There is something different about celibacy.  

It is easy for some people to realize that they do not have this call. When it is a question of choosing their state in life, generally celibacy does not upset them nor their plans for marriage. There are others who are called to this state, yet balk at the sacrifice; celibacy can be quite disturbing for them, for they are of necessity divided deeply - between satisfying or not a perfectly legitimate and human aspiration, or between following or not the call of God, depending on which side you approach their problem from. 

celibacy challenges others 

The celibate's unspoken message is, this is what God has asked of me and I do it; can you do what he is asking of you as a single or married person? 

The celibacy of priests, religious and consecrated lay people is often a problem for those who are not called to it, especially for those who do not believe in the Catholic faith, because it is in the order of those heroic deeds which make everyone question himself. The challenge celibacy throws at everyone, married and unmarried alike, believer and unbeliever, is simple, direct and total - what are you looking for in life? Can you control yourself? Can you use the gifts God gives you properly? 

Celibacy also calls into question their concept of happiness, the world's fascination with pleasure and, concretely today, its unbridled pursuit of the sensual.  

Celibacy has to do with what we think the human person is, and what his destiny is.  

celibacy challenges the priest 

A priest accepts celibacy as Christ's call, in order to imitate him, and serve him, the Church and people better.  

It would be good to go back over the points we made when talking about the things we are implying and when analyzing our acceptance and indeed desire for heroism to exist. We imply that some things have value - and what we are referring to here is Christ's call, the call to serve others by dedicating oneself totally, with no other distraction, to bring them the Jesus of salvation (cf. 2 Corinthians 7). We also imply that some values (total service) are greater than others which come more spontaneously to us (the companionship of marriage and the fulfillment of parenthood). Such a sacrifice is a good thing (Don't we admire the martyrs who died rather than turn their back on their commitment?). And there is certainly a proportion between the sacrifice and what it gains - Christ would have given his life for even one soul.  

But this is still a very poor explanation of celibacy. Viewed in this way it could still be a strait jacket, suffered grudgingly.  

Celibacy especially challenges the priest to love. 

love more, love more deeply 

You cannot be celibate for Christ unless you are able to love passionately, love constantly, love faithfully. 

Some say that celibacy is only an imposition of the Church. If it were, it might be what we referred to before as hurt. But even if we suppose it is only a harsh condition the Church imposes on those who want to be priests, and yet you accept it because you want to be Christ's priest, you have already made of it an act of love. You prefer to answer Christ's call to the priesthood in a way and with conditions that do not come easy to you. You have made an act of love. You have made a sacrifice for your love. I guarantee you, your love has taken a jump in growth. And it will continue to grow at an extraordinary rate if you are faithful to this love. 

But there is a lot, lot more. Celibacy is love, and like any love, celibacy is imitation. 

love in imitation 

Celibacy is to choose the exact same style of life that Christ chose for himself. And Mary too. This is key when talking about celibacy.  

Consecrated celibacy is to be like Christ. To want to be like Christ. To go to any measure to be like Christ. The Church has a call to be Christ, in its members, and some are called to reproduce in their lives his real virginity and celibacy. 

When you consecrate your celibacy to Christ, you preach with your life. You tell people no pleasure the world can offer can compare with what it is to love him, and what it will be to be with him for eternity. And if you are ever weak, the path you have chosen will itself remind you of these things. 

love in dedication 

Celibacy's total consecration frees us to be totally dedicated to Christ's things. It allows a type of service and dedication that would not be possible under other circumstances.  

No one better understands this than the married lay missionary. The duties of parenthood are the way to holiness for the married person and imply an investment of resources, time and energies that cannot be dedicated to the broader apostolate; the care for one another of the married couple is real and practical in its implications. For many married people, it often requires a step in faith to realize that the service they render to their spouses is of more importance in God's eyes than apostolic action that is outside their primary duties as married people. Married people wanting to do apostolate often find a first area of tension in this. 

That is why St. Paul could say, "I want you to be free from anxiety. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord so that they may be holy in body and spirit, but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to put any restraint on you, but to promote good order and unhindered devotion to the Lord." (1 Corinthians 7:32-35) 

Married love and service to one another is indeed a sign of Christ's love for the Church and the way he gave himself up for it, as St. Paul himself writes to the Ephesians; husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. 

If you take that a step further, you can say that married love, because it is a reflection of Christ's love and sacrifice of himself for his Church, helps us to understand the nature of celibate dedication to Christ, which is direct imitation of Christ's exclusive and sacrificial love for the Father and souls. 

So if you feel our Lord may be offering you this gift, you should take some walks on your own with him, just the two of you. He might just be proposing to you. 

Don't worry, it's normal to feel a flutter of excitement as you say YES.