McCarrick made the comments during the bishops' closed-door spiritual retreat last week in suburban Denver. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops disclosed details of the task force presentation Wednesday.

"Disciplinary actions are permitted," McCarrick said. "But they should be applied when efforts at dialogue, persuasion and conversion have been fully exhausted."

McCarrick said keeping the sacrament from defiant Catholic lawmakers could turn Communion into a "partisan political battleground," create a backlash in support of abortion rights and raise concerns about the loyalties of Catholic politicians.

"It could be more difficult for faithful Catholics to serve in public life because they might be seen not as standing up for principle, but as under pressure from the hierarchy," McCarrick said. "We could turn weak leaders who bend to the political winds into people who are perceived as courageous resistors of episcopal authority."

He recommended instead that bishops do more to educate Catholics that opposition to abortion and euthanasia is based on the earliest church teachings and is unequivocal.

Church leaders at the Colorado meeting voted 183-6 to adopt a statement warning lawmakers at odds with church teaching that they were "cooperating in evil," but made no definitive statement on whether they should be denied Communion. Under church law, each bishop decides how to apply Catholic teachings in his own diocese.

McCarrick's task force is developing guidelines on this and other issues as it adapts for the American church a 2002 Vatican doctrinal document called "Participation of Catholics in Political Life."

The task force may not be complete its work until after Election Day.

Their work drew national attention after Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis said he would deny Communion to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a Catholic who supports abortion rights. Some abortion opponents have been pressuring other bishops to follow suit.

Baltimore Cardinal William Keeler, a task force member, told the bishops that the prelates who expressed an opinion to the panel opposed using Communion as a sanction by about a 3-1 margin.

McCarrick also outlined the guidance provided to the U.S. bishops by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's orthodoxy watchdog. It was Ratzinger's office that issued Rome's document on Catholics in public life.

Ratzinger said bishops should meet with, teach and warn Catholic lawmakers before deciding whether to deny Communion, but indicated that bishops could ultimately decide to withhold the sacrament.

Ratzinger also said that voters would be guilty of "cooperating in evil" if they backed a candidate specifically because he or she supports abortion rights or euthanasia. But he left open the possibility that a voter could legitimately decide to support a pro-abortion rights candidate, based on that person's overall platform.