Under pressure from parents, students and staffers at the San Francisco Catholic Archdiocese’s schools, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said Tuesday that he is re-examining strict guidelines he proposed for teachers that would require them to reject homosexuality, use of contraception and other “evil” behavior.

Cordileone also said he is dropping an effort to designate high school teachers as “ministers,” which, under a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, would have removed government-mandated employee protections by placing them solely under church control.

Cordileone ignited a political firestorm this month when he told the nearly 500 people working in archdiocese high schools that he wanted them to “affirm and believe” strict morality clauses in an updated faculty handbook. Many teachers, parents and students objected, saying they interpreted the clauses to mean staffers could be fired for having homosexual relations, using birth control, masturbating or engaging in other actions labeled as “gravely” or “intrinsically” evil.

In an hour-long meeting Tuesday with The Chronicle’s editorial board, Cordileone said he is forming a committee of theology teachers from the archdiocese’s four high schools to go over his proposed guidelines. The committee, he said, will “recommend to me an expanded draft” and “adjust the language to make the statements more readily understandable to a wider leadership.”

“I was surprised at the degree of consternation over this,” Cordileone said. What he originally proposed, he said, was simply a clear reiteration of Catholic morality doctrines concerning behavior.

The archdiocese later issued a statement saying Cordileone “has not repealed anything. He is adding explanations, clarifications, and material on Catholic social teaching, via a committee of religion teachers he is establishing. ...

“Nothing already planned to go in is being removed or retracted or withdrawn,” the archdiocese wrote.

Few precedents

Only a few U.S. dioceses have added such strong language to their teacher conduct codes in recent years requiring conformity to church doctrine, experts say. Foremost among them were Oakland, Santa Rosa and Cleveland, but Oakland and Santa Rosa diluted their dictates after encountering opposition.

More than 6,000 people around the nation have signed an online petition opposing Cordileone’s proposed dictates, and the union representing archdiocese teachers is negotiating over the language.

Of particular concern to some faculty members was the prospect of punishment for behavior done behind closed doors. One statement from the archdiocese said high school administrators, faculty and staff who are Catholics “are called to conform their hearts, minds and consciences, as well as their public and private behavior, ever more closely to the truths taught by the Catholic Church.”

Following principles

Cordileone said he has no intention of invading private lives. The purpose of his guidelines, he said, is to make sure his teachers’ behavior, and the examples they set in public, don’t contradict bedrock Catholic principles — which condemn same-sex marriage, abortion and birth control.

Cordileone meant only to “promote greater clarity,” he said, and not to trigger teacher firings or ignite “a witch hunt. ... We’re not out looking for trouble.”

He came up with the guidelines partly in response to “allegations of some bad things that had happened,” both in and out of classrooms, Cordileone said. He would not be specific, saying only that they were “mostly in the area of sexual morality, but also in the political arena.”

The morality issue that has drawn the most attention concerns same-sex marriage, which Cordileone has campaigned against both locally and nationally. He said his new guidelines would not mandate dismissal of teachers who are in such marriages, but that they would still bar them from promoting the concept to students in any way through their public actions.

'A wider context’

“We have to see it in a wider context,” the archbishop said. “What is the teacher teaching in the teacher’s classroom, what kind of witness does the teacher bear? We don’t want to kick any people out on the street. It is a counter-witness, but I would look to see any way possible that we can make accommodation.”

Gay students, he added, “are certainly welcome at our schools.”

“My primary concern is for the good of our students,” Cordileone said. “We want our students to flourish.”

Cordileone indicated that he did not believe his actions were contrary to the wishes of Pope Francis, who has said the church should focus less on divisive issues such as same-sex marriage and birth control.

“Pope Francis certainly supports the church teaching in these areas,” Cordileone said. “As pope, he has spoken about the need to protect children’s rights to have a mother and a father.”

The designation of staffers as “ministers” had particularly worried some teachers who feared they would lose federal, state and local governmental protection against discrimination on the job.

In its statement Tuesday, the archdiocese said Cordileone was now using the word “ministry” and that “he would work hard to find language that satisfies two needs. One is the need to protect the rights of the teachers in the Catholic high schools to have complaints fairly treated. The other is the right of the archiocese to run Catholic schools that are faithful to their mission. Language must be identified that meets both needs.”

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kfagan@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @kevinchron