Why would a 1988 Honda Accord Lxi leak oil?

My 1989 Honda Accord Lxi with 168K miles was leaking engine oil at the rate of about a Quart every week. Now i just check oil levels weekly and haven't needed to replenish it other than as normal. The fix i found was in replacing the PCV valve. Interestingly, the advice i had gotten for a non expert like me was to not try and save a few bucks by just cleaning the old PCV valve. But to replace it with a new one. The reasoning was that in a properly working PCV valve, not only is it there to help redirect vapors back into the combustion chamber, but to aid in preventing vapors from building up which could also be a cause for premature oil leaks around the crankcase area.