Brian,
   Thank you for the help.
   You were correct, it was not the style sheet element.
   The problem was that the input XML referenced a remote server and this was what was timing out.
   Thank you for the clarity.
-John

I seriously doubt the problem lies in the xsl:stylesheet element.  The
xmlns:xsl attribute doesn't cause the processor to attempt to connect to
the W3 site; it just identifies the namespace in which XSLT elements
reside.

Since you haven't provided any other information, I can only guess that
the problem is possibly your input XML (is it very large?) or the output
it's generating.

Cheers,
b.