"Church Fathers?" [Matt 23:9] No thanks. I'll take our Lord's Word over those of others'. [Matt 5:38-48] Christ is not ambivalent in the slightest in His words: "Do not resist an evil man." 100% pacifist. No justification for war or deliberately harming another -- that is Christ's Word. I'm familiar with all the logic pretzel-twisting that many have come up with to simply dismiss what our Lord plainly teaches His followers on this matter.
Where in Scripture is there a justification for gainsaying Christ's teaching here so that it is acceptable to do any harm to another person?
Extra-Biblical "Fathers," "Traditions," "Councils," etc., there is no authority in them other than what flawed, mortal, human "wisdom" grants to them.
Let me ask you three straightforward questions: do you follow the Nicene Creed? Do you believe in the Trinity? Do you accept the standard 27 book New Testament canon?
The specific set of 27 books in our New Testament was declared canonical by Archbishop Athanasius of Alexandria, who years earlier, when Alexander of Alexandria, who had been tortured by Diocletian, was archbishop of that ancient city, the historic patriarchate of Mark the Evangelist, had defended the doctrine of the Trinity at Nicea. As the Protodeacon of the Church of Alexandria, Athanasius explained to the bishops assembled by Arius, who had many powerful supporters, the charges of heresy brought against Arius by the Church in Alexandria, because Arius had taught that Jesus Christ was not God Incarnate, not begotten as the Son of God, but rather created by God. He persuaded them to unanimously convict Arius of heresy and depose him from the priesthood, and to unanimously adopt the Nicene Creed. Later, the powerful backers of Arius led by the evil bishop of Nicomedia, Eusebius, got in the good graces of Emperor Constantine and especially his son Constantius; Constantine was baptized by Eusebius of Nicomedia on his deathbed*, and Constantius called a council of clergy hastily ordained to the episcopate to exile Athanasius, establish Arianism as the state religion of the Roman Empire, and persecute the Nicene Christians in Alexandria. For several years, Athanasius fought almost single handedly to defend the doctrine of the Trinity, which is why many scholars refer to him as Athanasius Contra Mundum (Against the World). It was not until a dozen years after his death that a Nicene Emperor again ruled the Roman Empire and the persecution of Nicene Christians only definitively stopped about 23 years after his death.
This is relevant because Athanasius also composed canon laws and made judicial decisions as the arch-superintendent (Archbishop, from the Greek Archepiskopos), of the Church of Alexandria and all Egypt. One such decision was whether soldiers returning from war would have to serve a penance before being readmitted to the Eucharist. Athanasius said no, military service was honorable, because of its defense of the weak among the public, and soldiers were to be admitted to communion and receive the Eucharist immediately on their return.
Police are simply soldiers who protect us from what we might call domestic sources of violence (by which I do not exclusively mean domestic violence, but rather all violence that would violate our person or deprive us of our freedoms the source of which is not a foreign military power).
Since Athanasius decided which books belong in the New Testament, and since he is the most importnt figure in the defense of the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Word, and the divinity of Christ as the only begotten Son of the Father, begotten, not created, and of one essence with the Father, very God of very God, by whom all things were made (John 1:1-18, Matthew 28:19), a creed he also worked to formulate, it seems to me very difficult for us to argue with his interpretation that military service (and by extension, police service), is honorable and not in itself worthy of penance.
Athanasius aside, if we turn to the Scriptures, it is clear that the Old Testament cannot be read in opposition to the New. God commanded Israel to form an army and to fight wars, and we find occasions where the Army of the Kingdom of Israel acted to defend that sacred kingdom of the Chosen People who were the kernel of the Catholic Church* of today. God does not change; since military and police actions are commanded in the Old Testament, including acts of law enforcement which are not specifically religious in nature, for example, those portions of the Torah dealing with disputes between neighbors over livestock, we can say that the military and law enforcement remain acceptable, and perhaps commanded, by God today.
* I do not mean the Roman Catholic Church but the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church we confess in the Creed, which is universal and orthodox; different Christians define it differently, I as a congregationalist one way, an Anglican, another way, a Roman catholic, another way, but however it is defined, the seed of the Church Catholic is in Abraham’s offspring, because it was into Israel that Christ was born.
