While I understand the point you are making here, and my comment is not specifically to your point, I want to comment nonetheless that the notion that a cleric is "reduced" to the lay state is problematic at best.  I don't know what the Latin says, but in recent years it's been rendered in English as "returned" to the lay state.  The notion that the clerical state is higher, and the lay state lower, is repugnant -- and dangerous.