Hey everyone! Thanks for your input. The catalog issue looks to be resolved. The /var/bacula directory was owned by root:root. Chowning it to bacula:bacula appears to have solved the issue.
As to the problem backing up the remote machine, I'm still not sure where that problem lies. However that also appears to be resolved after I kicked off a manual backup of the remote machine that succeeded. The subsequent backup of that host occurring at 3:00 AM also was a success. I'll keep an eye on it and see if this issue returns.