I think I may have found something here in the tomcat logs.
INFO: cgi: runCGI (stderr):install_driver(Oracle) failed: Can't load '/usr/local/lib64/perl5/auto/DBD/Oracle/Oracle.so' for module DBD::Oracle: libclntsh.so.12.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory at /usr/lib64/perl5/DynaLoader.pm line 200, <CONFIG_FILE> line 5.
I didn't even think of looking at these at first. d'oh. but what is weird (at least to me) is that tomcat can't load that. Another piece of the puzzle in any case.