The question, in both cases, involves smoking while praying. The priest never looks at, or gives a judgement on smoking in general, there's no reason to assume the priest would forbid smoking in other circumstances.

The question does change, but not as fundamentally as you're claiming it does. The information presented in both questions remains the same, only the word order changes, which changes how the priest perceives that information.

Anyway, good luck out there. =)