> I wish there was a way to tell the parser to just ignore the 
> DTD declaration...
> 

Xerces provides an extensive range of configuration properties, including
the standard SAX capability to define an EntityResolver that redirects the
parser to a locally-stored copy of the DTD, as well as the option
http://apache.org/xml/features/nonvalidating/load-external-dtd

So your wish may be granted.

http://xerces.apache.org/xerces2-j/features.html

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/