We use RMAN for most of the reasons stated above. It wasn't "easy" to get set up, but now that it is, it works great.

As far as loosing the Catalog as well as the production DB... That "shouldn't" happen. Oracle recommends that the Recovery catalog be placed on a DIFFERENT server than your Production DB. You should then plan for traditional OS backups of your Recovery Catalog.

Hope that helps!
Jodie