So, I went into the Localization & Messaging Editor, created a new project and added a text value for testing.  The key for the text value is "ParentTitle".  I then generated teh xml files, and verified they are going to the correct location.  In my InitApplication I have the following:

SetActiveLanguage("FactorSoft", 1033)
MessageXmlPath = CtlCommonPath & "\Data"
MessageKeyType = Messaging.MessageKeyDataType.XML
MessageLocaleID = GetActiveLanguage("FactorSoft", UserName)

The necessary imports have been put in to make it more readable.  Since I only have one language set I shouldn't really need to do all of the Setting and Getting of ActiveLanguage, but I put it in there to make sure it is using the current LocaleID.  All of this executes fine, but when it goes to retrieve the text value of "ParentTitle" it says "The specified key [ParentTitle] was not found within the localization database."  Why is it looking in the database if I specified for it to look in the XML file?  What did I do wrong?

I'm still having no success getting this setup.  It appears that the XmlPath is right, and I'm doing the following:

Localization.MessageXmlPath = CtlCommonPath & "\Data"
Localization.MessageKeyType = Messaging.MessageKeyDataType.XML
Localization.MessageLocaleID = 1033
MsgBox(Localization.RetrieveTextValue("ParentTitle"))

I still get an error on the Retrieve saying it can't find ParentTitle as a key.  Is there possibly some step I'm leaving out when setting this up?  You guys have the XML files I've created and they seem to be right.  Is there anything else at all I can look at or try here?

Well, you have everything configured correctly... what is the stack trace for the exception that is being thrown when that key is not found in the files?