Final answer:
Johannes Kepler did not fear the Roman Catholic Church when publishing his findings because he was a Protestant, which offered him some protection as Protestant regions were less influenced by the Church compared to Catholic regions. His Protestant faith allowed him to contribute to the heliocentric model without facing the same persecution as Galileo.
Step-by-step explanation:
The German astronomer Johannes Kepler did not fear the Roman Catholic Church when publishing his scientific findings because he was a Protestant. While the Catholic Church, placed under pressure by the Protestant Reformation, condemned the heliocentric views of Copernicus and later Galileo, Kepler, being a Protestant and living in a time where members of northern German nobility (where Kepler was from) had embraced Protestantism, did not face the same level of religious scrutiny from the Catholic establishment as his counterpart Galileo did in Italy. Kepler's allegiance to the heliocentric model and his subsequent contributions through his three laws of planetary motion fortified the Copernican view and continued to challenge Church doctrine on celestial mechanics. Kepler's work gained a foothold more easily in regions where Protestantism had taken root, and the Catholic Church's influence was less pronounced.