Welcome to the JavaRanch, Andrew!
It looks like your real problem is that you're trying to create a web-inf login page in JSF.
There are certain types of web pages that cannot be done in JSF. That's because they're not requested by a URL, they're served up automatically by the appserver when it needs them and retrieves a resource pathname from web.xml. Because it's the appserver handling the operation and not the webapp, the internally-generated request doesn't have an actual URL and without a URL request to be routed to the FacesServlet, you can't have JSF functionality.
Sounds confusing, I know, but the net effect is that resources defined as file path references in web.xml for use by the appserver cannot be JSF, Or, for that matter, they can't be
Struts, either. Only straight HTML or
JSP.
The secret of how to be miserable is to constantly expect things are going to happen the way that they are "supposed" to happen.
You can have faith, which carries the understanding that you may be disappointed. Then there's being a willfully-blind idiot, which virtually guarantees it.