Ok, La France est une espèce de Catholique.

What you describe is no different from the way things are in Spain, but still Catholic attitudes (traditional values?) inform most politicians on the right and even some on the left. It's just that Spain doesn't carry the banner of world secularism.

There are funny stories about Spain where the Church will often claim over 90% of all Spaniards are catholic in order to get more political clout, on the basis of the number of people baptised. Apparently some guy got sick of this, tried to get sticken off the books (which don't exist in a centralised way, anyway, apparently) and when he realised the church would not officially declare him an apostate he founded an association excomunión y liberación [a pun on comunión y liberación, a political/religious outfit for young catholics and on the similarity of communion and excomunication which is absent in English].

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman

Wikipedia: religion in Spain

Roman Catholicism is the most popular religion in the country. According to several sources (CIA World Fact Book 2005, Spanish official polls and others), from 80% to 94% self-identify as Catholics , whereas around 6% to 13% identify with either other religions or none at all [citation needed]. Even though so many Spainards identify themselves as Catholics (80%), only 40% believe in God and 28% go to church [citation needed]. It is important to note, however, that many Spaniards identify themselves as Catholics just because they were baptized, even though they are not very religious at all. According to recent surveys (New York Times, April 19, 2005) only around 18% of Spaniards regularly attend Mass. Of those under 30, only about 14% attend.

Depending on what conclusions you want to draw from it, there's nothing wrong with saying Spain is a Catholic country. It's also very secular.

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman