This turned out to be permissions related and ssl configuration
related. I was able to track down the problem by first getting the app
to run in a non-ssl virtual host - to get the ownership happy, in my
case 'chown -R apache:apache .' - then messing with the ssl virtual
config using webmin instead of editing the virtual host by text
editor.
I am NOT a fan of Centos. Oh, btw, I had to disable SELinux early on
in this game that Centos people play.