XSL - using CDATA or other to escape message otherwise seen as markup

I'm trying to use CDATA to escape a block of text that would otherwise be interpreted as markup.

I have the following .xsl

  <xsl:template match="Response">
    <Request>
      MI
      <xsl:call-template name="strip-between-tags">
        <xsl:with-param name="str" select="."/>
      </xsl:call-template>        
    </Request>
  </xsl:template>
 
  <xsl:template name="strip-between-tags">
    <xsl:param name="str"/>  
    <xsl:if test="contains($str, '&lt;')">
      <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&lt;</xsl:text>
      <xsl:value-of select="substring-before(substring-after($str, '&lt;'), '&gt;')"></xsl:value-of>
      <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&gt;</xsl:text>
      <xsl:call-template name="strip-between-tags">
        <xsl:with-param name="str" select="substring-after($str, '&gt;')"/>
      </xsl:call-template>
    </xsl:if>
    <xsl:if test="not (contains($str, '&lt;'))">
      <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"> &lt;X&gt; </xsl:text>
    </xsl:if>
  </xsl:template>  

    This is my input data that I'm feeding into the xsl:
<CommandRS Version="2003.XML1.0.1">
      <Response>MI&lt;X&gt; X IF SELECT NAME  &lt;CAD&gt;&lt; &gt;</Response>
</CommandRS>
 
 
  Produces output
<CommandRQ Version="2003.XML.0.1">
      <Request>MI<X><CAD>< > <X> </Request>
</CommandRQ>
 

However, the output is erroring out because of the message between the Request tags.
So I tried changing my xsl to include CDATA:

  <xsl:template match="Response">
    <Request>
     <![CDATA[
      
    MI
    <xsl:call-template name="strip-between-tags">
        <xsl:with-param name="str" select="."/>
      </xsl:call-template>
     
        ]]>
    </Request>
  </xsl:template>
 
but this would comment out my template call. Please advise on how I can escape the block of text using CDATA or other method.
 
I also tried
  <xsl:template match="Response">
    <Request>
      <xsl:text><![CDATA[ ]]></xsl:text>
    MI
    <xsl:call-template name="strip-between-tags">
        <xsl:with-param name="str" select="."/>
      </xsl:call-template>

    </Request>
  </xsl:template>
 
but the output never included the "![CDATA[". Not sure how to implement this into the xsl