For the usual reasons...sodomy, heresy, and sacrilege. The same things that endear bishops today to the liberal media.
The sober consensus is that the charges were trumped up and that money and power issues were the real motives. If some members had strayed into homosexualism and gnostic occultism, it would not be the only instance an organization of merely human men ostensibly dedicated to lofty goals fell prey to the minstrations and temptations of evil.
"The same things that endear bishops today to the liberal media."
wow -- the truth doth sting
DeMolay is now the Masonic young ladies' Order.
Coincidence?